What to Make of Star Trek: Discovery

onOctober 8, 2017byJoe Viglione

To say that this long-time Star Trek fan was disappointed with the new Star Trek thrown to us would be an understatement. There are basically two aspects to science fiction films – the great and the terrible – and if you want to look like Star Wars, which Star Trek: Discovery does, opening in Obi-Wan Kenobi territory, new sand people and all, into some quasi Klingon territory, G-force laden with the Klingon language as well, and you see the dilemma. While the current films try to reinvent the original series we have bizarre items like Deep Space Nine, Scott Bakula’s Enterprise and 24th-century Starfleet officer Kathryn Janeway stiff as a board in Voyager watering down the legend. Sure, The Next Generation got over the hump despite Jean Luc Picard’s tiresome operatic “Four score and seven years ago” approach to being captain of a starship, we got to like and even cling (on) to the new characters.

Next Generation also gave us The Borg and Q, the Borg is one of the best villains since the Klingons, while Deep Space Nine and Voyager drifted into difficult Jar Jar Binks areas that became a turnoff to long-time fans.

With a base of fanatics thirsty for new Star Trek, the glitzy offering has already succeeded in breaking a record for most subscriber sign-ups in a single day. But we have seen this all before and the entire concept goes sideways rather than going where no Star Trek viewer has gone before. The era that brought us Perry Mason, the Twilight Zone and the Outer Limits was a world of imaginative authors whose variety of works have stood the test of time. Re-exploring and bringing to life sequels to the original series which fans on YouTube are grappling with on low budgets (Wrath of Khan, despite ageing, is still considered the best of the films by many) is what the viewers crave. This new Discovery is big, ostentatious, politically correct and falls almost as flat as 1989’s The Final Frontier motion picture. But that’s this critic’s opinion, you may find Discovery exciting and new. It’s just ST:INO – Star Trek In Name Only!

Next TV reports:
#1 ‘Star Trek Discovery’ Drives Record Sign Ups for CBS All Access
CBS announced that yesterday’s premiere of Star Trek: Discovery pushed its CBS All Access over-the-top subscription service to a record for most subscriber sign-ups in a single day, however, the company hasn’t released specific subscriber numbers for CBS All Access or for its direct-to-consumer version of Showtime.

WHY THIS MATTERS: While the show premiered on the company’s linear network, future episodes will be made available exclusively on CBS All Access on Sunday nights after 8:30 p.m. ET. The company added that All Access had its best week and month with the launch of Star Trek, the kick off of the NFL on CBS on its local live feeds and the season finale of Big Brother.

Joe Viglione is the Chief Film Critic at TMRZoo.com. He has written thousands of reviews and biographies for AllMovie.com, Allmusic.com, Gatehouse Media, Al Aronowitz’s The Blacklisted Journal, and a variety of other media outlets. Joe also produces and hosts Visual Radio, a seventeen year old variety show on cable TV which has interviewed Jodie Foster, director/screenwriter David Koepp, Michael Moore, John Cena, comics/actors Margaret Cho, Gilbert Gottfried, Gallagher, musicians Mark Farner and Don Brewer of Grand Funk Railroad, Ian Hunter of Mott The Hoople, Ray Manzarek, John Densmore, Felix Cavaliere of The Rascals, political commentator Bill Press and hundreds of other personalities.

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